Beautiful place!! Met the former president of the Friends of Burgess Falls (didn’t catch his name though!). Very knowledgeable guy!

Anyhow this guy and I got to talking about Ohio (he has a brother in Columbus) and then he mentions softball…. then he had my attention! He helps officiate/umpire the slow pitch games within the Amish and Mennonite communities in Ohio. I mentioned Orville and Kidron places where Adri has placed over the past few years.

This is not a post I ever wanted to write but I’ve found writing helps me process and express thoughts and feelings that should not be bottled up. This may help someone, it may spark us all to slow down and see how those around us are doing.

As I was eating lunch today when I opened up facebook and saw a picture of a former co-worker, with the words Celebration of Life under the pic. To say I was immediately saddened is an under statement…I said “no!!” loud enough that the lady five feet away heard me.

Due to the fact many may know him I’m not going with a name, just friend and co-worker, out of respect for him. We worked together for about 2 years from 2013-2015 – we talked daily, joked and laughed and sometimes the conversations turned to more serious topics but for the most part just good casual conversation.

I was his supervisor, but I’m the type to engage my team in conversation and help out when possible. He found out at that time I was coaching softball and from then on he would call me coach, whether at work or in a facebook post, etc.

This guy could build cars, have a good time and genuinely cared about people. A great guy….. but a guy who was not happy.

While I hadn’t seen him in few years, we did chat online once in a while. Sometimes was just seeing what the other was up to or seeing where each other was working at, at the given time. But there were other times were he was upset or sad, health not doing well or just depressed.

We said many times hey, “let’s get together” but we never did. I wish we had. We can’t stop time, but we can take a minute to ask others if they are doing okay, then react if they aren’t.

Instead of living in fast forward and missing signs or hearing the despair I want to try to ask the questions AND more importantly listen to what a person says.

My friend took his own life at age 60… to young. I don’t know all the demons he was fighting, I don’t know if anyone could have stopped him. I do know that he was loved and cared about but perhaps he didn’t know that.

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, are depressed or just need to talk things out, there is help.